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Mobistar was majority owned by Orange, formerly France Telecom, while trading under its own name. In February 2016 the company announced it would adopt the Orange brand. On 31 March 2016 it confirmed in a release that Mobistar would take the Orange brand name from Monday 9 May 2016, that the transition would be gradual, and that customers did not have to do anything because nothing would change for them.

The official rationale was strategic. The release said adopting Orange would support Mobistar's strategic development and strengthen its position in Belgium as a convergent as well as mobile operator, for individuals, families and the professional market. Telecompaper put it plainly: Orange wanted to position its Belgian subsidiary as a converged fixed and mobile player, and Mobistar had begun offering fixed services that year over cable networks including Telenet's.

The mechanics followed. Telecompaper reported on 6 May that the shareholders' meeting approved renaming the company Orange Belgium, the first step in moving from the Mobistar brand to Orange. Customers would see the change from Sunday 8 May, when the website took on Orange's colours, with the first Orange campaign launching on Tuesday 10 May and the brand rolling out across all points of sale. The release had said all departments were involved, that a campaign would explain the change, and that fitting out the future Orange stores would begin in April. Shareholder structure and management were unchanged.

This is the least surprising kind of rebrand: a group finally putting its own name on a subsidiary it controls. The logic is hard to argue with. A group brand gives a local operator instant scale, and a convergence pitch needs one name across mobile and fixed. Notably, the company name changed by shareholder vote before customers saw a single orange storefront, so the corporate entity led and the consumer brand followed within days. Still, Mobistar was a well known Belgian name, and swapping it for a French group's master brand trades local familiarity for corporate coherence. The communication was competent and calm, with its insistence that customers need do nothing, which is exactly how a brand migration should be handled.